A rose by any other name...

...wouldn't be as cool. What if they had named the rose "crap-weasil" instead eh? Would you buy a girl a bunch of Crap-weasils to win her heart? I don't think so...


Ok, so I'm gonna jump around a little on this one, but it ends with a solid syllogism so bear with me.

I like to follow themes for my blogs. This one is about why my parents cursed my existence when I was little. I don't know what I did to them to receive such hatred, but it must have been really really bad. Of course, I'm not gonna get to that part until the end. Instead, let's talk about movies. You see, life can be explained really really well through movies...

The year is 1990. I was 10 years old. Iraq was invading Kuwait, Nelson Mandella was being freed, and Dr. Jack Kevorkian was assisting his first suicide patient.

Know what else happened? A little movie called Mr. Destiny was released in theaters. I'm sure you've seen it. It stars Jim Belushi, as a middle class average guy. He has a normal boring job in an office and lives in a normal boring house with a normal boring wife, etc etc...

So you gotta ask yourself, "Jim, why is life so bad?" Well if he were writing this blog he'd tell you that it was because of a pitch that he didn't hit in a little league game when he was a kid. If he hit the ball then they would have won the big game...but he struck out. And that became a theme for his life.

Now you meet Michael Caine as a mysterious bartender who is able to turn back time and show Jim what his life would have been like if he had just hit that ball. It's pretty sweet. He's the boss of the company. He's rich...drives a nice car...and I think he has a trophy wife too. We're gonna stop there. I mean, the moral of the story turns out to be that his life wasn't that bad beforehand...but that ruins MY point.

What I'm getting at is that we all have these moments in our lives. Moments, that if traversed successfully, will lead to better living. BUT, if you fail, then you lose...life gets worse. Of course, no one can see the importance of these moments until you look back at them in the days that follow.

If only you had hit that pitch. If only you had aced that test. If only the girl of your dreams hadn't gotten sick right before your first date. If one of these goes right then Bob's you're uncle.

I'm not going to get into this particular rant right now, because
1. It's personal.
2. It's not the point of this blog (yeah, I'm getting there)
3. The girl of my dreams may read this one day and see that I actually call her "the girl of my dreams" and then she'll slap a restraining order on me so fast that...well...um...we won't get another date.

So now we get to the point of all of this rambling...

Our names.

We're given them at birth and have no say in the matter. It's a cruel injustice. Parents are morons. The government should take away this right.

Case in point: My father wanted to name me Obadiah. the only plus side is that I would have been called Obi-wan Kenobi and maybe that would have led to something neat. Luckily, I was handed my father's name, and his father's before him. I am the 3rd.

Yeah, it's ok...but it has problems. My whole life people have called on the phone and we don't know if they want to talk to me or my father. Banks mix up deposits. And mail order brides show up and...um...well, let's leave that one for another blog.

Here's my ACTUAL point. I was listening to the Y-100 morning show last week on my way to work. They were talking about nicknames that people have. I mean, the origins of common nicknames like "skip, Butch, etc" and I heard something that sent a wave of anger through my mind. I heard something that made my world turn upside down. Something that made me look back and see how my life could have been so much better. It was the equivalent to a thousand missed pitches. It was like going on a date with Pamela Anderson and finding out that she stuffs her bra and really has no boobs.

The mentioned that people have nicknames if they are a Jr, 3rd, 4th, etc. and the common nickname for someone who is the 3rd is Trip. I could have been Trip Harford. I would have excelled at athletics...gotten all the girls...and easily won class president. I could have been floating on a cloud....but instead I got a lifetime of grief because my parents never thought of giving me a nickname.

And now it's lost. You don't get nicknames this late in life. And I can't name my son the 3rd again. He'd be the 4th...and ya know what he'd be called? Quarty (said: Korty). I couldn't do that to him. It would be too mean.

So that's it. That's what you sat through my rant for. Now the truth is out and I can see that I AM the man with the boring job and plain wife...and it's all because of my parents...